


the devil and the deep blue sea

by blue-plums (arabesque05)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Jazz - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-09-16 05:10:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16947615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabesque05/pseuds/blue-plums
Summary: all stories are about wolves.





	1. Chapter 1

Naruto was born in a small coastal fishing village: the type of place where even well after the war the women still went diving for seabed oysters and shellfish and the men went out onto the ocean in their little wooden boats, hauling fishing nets for mackerel. Schoolchildren wore sailor uniforms, as was the fashion in the city, but that was maybe the most modern thing about the place. The village kept to its traditions.

But Mr. Takeuchi who ran the general store had a wireless. Naruto liked to loiter there after school, eating ramen and listening to the news broadcast. Sometimes, when Mr. Takeuchi went into the stock room in the back to do inventory, Naruto reached across the store counter and turned the dial on the wireless. If he fiddled with it well enough, it caught the frequency of some American military base jazz station, which played Benny Goodman and Thelonius Monk. Naruto had no idea where the military base was, but that was the amazing thing about radio. You could hear all sorts of things from places far away.

His fondness for Benny Goodman aside, which certainly made him strange enough, Naruto probably couldn’t have fit in in such a village anyway: he was too tall, his shoulders were too broad, his hair was a shocking yellow – the devil’s own color, said Mrs. Yamamoto. That was, of course, a pile of steaming cowshit. As if the devil had any reason to favor the yellow when such a color as orange existed. But Mrs. Yamamoto’s sentiment was clear enough and shared by many: Naruto was strange, and different from everyone else, and if that was because his color marked him as the devil’s own, then that was as good an explanation as any.

Naruto bore all this with mostly good humor. He had an unfortunate amount of practice at bearing terrible things with good humor: his mother had passed away when he was young; no one ever spoke of Naruto’s father, except in his capacity as the devil; Naruto was poor and ostracized and the subject of ugly rumors; he was an unremarkable student in school and there was not much hope that he could escape his current situation through academic excellence. But Naruto smiled still, and went to school, and said hello to all the villagers when he passed them in the streets; and if sometimes he needed to go to the general store and listen to the discordant chords of a strange, foreign music–discordant, counter-melodic, extemporized, and yet, resolving itself into aftermath loveliness–well, perhaps Naruto saw something of himself in that discordance.

* * *

Haruno Sakura was the only girl in the advanced math class at the high school, which embarrassed her friend Ino terribly. “Fucking fuck, forehead,” Ino swore with great regularity, at this perceived betrayal of feminine companionship. “You can’t tone it down a bit? Is it fun in that sausage fest of a class? They’re not even hot! Are you practically a guy yourself now?”

Sakura apologized readily enough, but without much sincerity. It was not a source of embarrassment for her: she was in that class by special dispensation from the principal, since classes were normally split by gender. Sakura didn’t have any solid plans for her future, but she had plans enough that her life wouldn’t be spent in a small coastal fishing village. She had a vague idea that there were bigger and brighter things elsewhere–probably in the bigger and brighter cities. Sakura had no desire to dive for oysters in the sea, salt caking her hair and eyelashes, rough waters rubbing her skin raw, sand catching between her toes everyday on the trek home. There was no shame in such a job certainly–Sakura’s mother was a diver–but every night Sakura rubbed ointment on her mother’s knuckles, which had swollen angry red from the day’s exertions. There was no shame in such a job, but it was a hard job.

There might have been other ways of avoiding the profession–certainly Ino had no intention of diving either–but Sakura did not consider herself pretty enough to marry a rich man. Sakura was decent-looking enough, certainly not repulsive; but her chest was flat, and her manners awkward, and she didn’t have the pale skin-dark hair coloring of traditional beauty. Ino, who was vivacious, or Hinata, who was demure, might marry well. Sakura had no such aspirations. Still, she had some confidence in her brains, and that would serve almost as well: women could work in the cities, as secretaries or nurses or even librarians. If she could read well enough and write well enough and knew enough math, Sakura could work in offices too and never venture into the ocean.

* * *

Naruto and Sakura did not exactly grow up next door to each other–but it worked out to about the same thing anyway. The Harunos lived next door to the Takeuchi general store, and Naruto–who technically lived at the orphanage–loitered enough in the store that Sakura and Naruto ran into each other pretty much everyday. Sakura thought Naruto was a rather dirty   
boy, which was true enough: he did not bathe as often as he should have. The orphanage, being indifferent to his state of hygiene, never made him. Still, Sakura was not unkind: she answered “Hello” to Naruto’s “Good morning”, and sometimes she sat with him at the counter of the general store, sharing a plate of roasted peanuts between them, both of them listening to  _‘Round Midnight_  on the wireless.

“It feels so….off-balance,” complained Sakura. “The next note is never the note I expect.”

“That’s the whole point,” said Naruto. “That’s improvising.”

“That is not improvising,” doubted Sakura, who had no high opinion about Naruto’s vocabulary. “Improvising is … it’s…making things up, isn’t it?”

“Same thing,” said Naruto. “It’s new. That’s why you don’t expect it.”

But that logic did not sit well with Sakura, who had recently started writing formal proofs in her advanced math class and now was a stickler for deductive step-by-step reasoning. The next day, she stopped by the library and checked out three books on Fumio Nanri, and an encyclopedia volume, which was the extent of the library’s resources on jazz. Sakura and Naruto read the books side by side at the general store counter: Sakura learned sometthing of the bigger and brighter things outside the village; Naruto fell a little in love–with the music, with the girl, it was difficult to say. Perhaps it did not matter.

* * *

And Uchiha Sasuke: when Uchiha Sasuke came to that remote coastal fishing village, he knew something of the bigger and brighter cities, and nothing about jazz music – and everything about devils.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Naruto and Sasuke did not like each other at first. Sakura did not know the details of that initial hostility, nor the subsequent making up -- but if she had learned anything in math class, it was that boys communicated in the most ridiculous roundabout manner. Sakura was not interested in the details: they were probably incredibly stupid. In any case, there was something about rooftop fights and bully group fights, and then one morning, Naruto and Sasuke came to school with matching bruises and split lips and they were the fastest of friends. That was how boys made friends, apparently.

“We’re blood brothers now!” declared Naruto.

“We are not,” said Sasuke.

“I do not think 'blood friends’ means 'making friends by spilling each other’s blood’,” said Sakura dubiously, looking in her bookbag for bandaids. She patched them up. Naruto grinned and thanked her and called her “Sakura-chan”; Sasuke did not say anything, but that was his own form of kindness. Sasuke could say the meanest things. Sakura had heard enough when he and Naruto had been feuding.

After school, Naruto left for his part-time job as stockboy at the Takeuchi general store. Naruto was maybe unlucky with his yellow hair; but he was also strong as an ox and Mr. Takeuchi was a pragmatic businessman before anything else. Sakura had college entrance exam tutorials. She had no idea what Sasuke did after school. He was good at calculus, and brought the most boring bento for lunch, onigiri day after day after day – but that was all she knew of him. Today, though, he lingered a moment by her shoe locker.

“Haruno,” he said.

“Uchiha-kun,” she answered, and felt a little silly. Her bandaid was on his cheek, and yet here they were, calling each other by their last names.

“Yesterday’s math assignment, the second half –- you remember, the -–”

“Oh! Yes, yes –- the differentiation of –-”

“–- trignometric functions, right,” and it turned out that they had gotten different answers for the third problem; so there was nothing to do but for both of them to pull out their notebooks and compare numbers. Some ten minutes later, they came to a agreement on the proper difference between the product and composition of functions. Sasuke said, “Thanks, Haruno,” and put away his books and left. Sakura frowned at her outdoor shoes tucked neatly in her shoe locker. Her cheeks felt warm.

* * *

So Naruto and Sasuke were friends; and Sakura and Sasuke looked over homework answers together occasionally and called each other by their last names, which made them -– …Sakura didn’t know. Classmates, she supposed, but none of Sakura’s classmates called her “Haruno.” It was a small village. Everyone knew everyone else. Sakura had always been “Sakura-chan”. “Haruno” made her feel … both distant and grown-up: it was proper, she supposed, at her age to be addressed as “Haruno” by boys; not with the casual intimacy of “Sakura-chan”. “Sakura” was for family, and very close friends, and…

Boyfriends, she thought for the first time.

* * *

On the six month anniversary of his employment at the general store, Naruto announced that he had bought a drum set. “So let’s do something for the school festival together!”

“A drum set? From where?” asked Sakura. They were at lunch. Sakura had brought a bento box; Sasuke had brought onigiri again; Naruto had bought ramen from the convenience store. Sakura had her doubts regarding the nutrition benefits of a diet consisting entirely of starch, and gave each boy an apple.

“By catalog,” said Naruto, alternating bites between his apple and ramen. “Mr. Takeuchi said he’ll mail it in for me, with the rest of the store order.”

“Where are you going to put it?” asked Sasuke. He handed the apple back to Sakura. She frowned at him.

“You guys!” scowled Naruto. “That’s not the important part! Didn’t you hear what I said about the school festival?”

“Idiot didn’t think about where to put a drum set,” Sasuke said to Sakura.

“He forgot,” agreed Sakura, wrinkling her nose. “I can’t imagine how: drums are supposed to be large, I thought.”

“Sakura-chan,” whined Naruto. “Are you ganging up with the asshole against me?”

“No,” said Sakura, peeling Sasuke’s apple, and added absently, “Don’t call me 'Sakura-chan’.”

“Sakura-chan,” said Naruto.

“I’ll hit you,” said Sakura.

Since Sakura had spent a significant part of her childhood winning brawls with Naruto, this was sufficient warning for Naruto to desist. “Haruno-chan,” he said mulishly.

“Uzumaki-kun,” said Sakura -– and that was strange. 'Naruto’ she had beaten into the dirt as a child. 'Uzumaki-kun’ was a tall, strapping young man with ridiculous biceps from working in Mr. Takeuchi’s stock room. When had that happened? she wondered. When had they all gotten so tall?

“But anyway!” said Uzumaki-kun now. “I was saying about the school festival! Sasuke, you play the piano. Sakura-chan -– you sing! We could do --”

“Is your drum set going to arrive in time?” asked Sakura. “The school festival’s next month.”

“Do you even know how play drums?” asked Sasuke.

Naruto declared that they were both terrible friends and that he would never again share his brilliant ideas with such undeserving persons as the two of them. “Ingrates!” was his concluding word, whereupon he turned on his heel and left. He had finished his ramen anyway.

“Mr. Okada down at the docks has some spare space in his storage.” Sakura cored the apple and sliced it and then set the pieces in front of Sasuke. “If Naruto doesn’t mind the sea salt down there.”

“Oh, from selling his boat. …I’ll talk to him.” He frowned down at the apples and then at her.

Sakura frowned back and pointed her peeling knife at him. “You’ll get gangrene if you don’t each fruits,” she threatened.

“I really won’t,” he said.

“Eat it anyway,” she said, and packed up her bento box and went to each with Ino. It wasn’t proper for her to eat alone with Sasuke, just the two of them. That sort of thing had meaning, was meant for high school sweethearts, couples who were walking steady with each other. And she and Sasuke-kun –- weren’t.

* * *

Here was the thing about Uchiha Sasuke: he was not a well person. Sakura suspected he didn’t sleep well at night. He was not happy and had not been for a long time –- it was apparent. Something pained his heart, and it festered. An older, wearier man might have been driven to the bottle. Sasuke did not drink but he indulged all the same -– in black moods, in bitterness, in a petty cruel mocking of Naruto’s expansive joy in the world.

And yet that was not the entirety of Uchiha Sasuke, nor the sum of him. There was an unexpected kindness in him too -– when Naruto’s poverty or poor education betrayed him, Sasuke did not belittle him for it; he found nothing improper about Sakura’s attendance in his math class; his sense of humor was dry and slow, but he did not laugh at others’ weaknesses.  Sakura could not say what it was about him. Certainly he was not the kindest or cleverest or funniest boy she knew. Perhaps it was his particular mix of those traits. Perhaps it was only that he was tall and good-looking.

But it would not do. A girl did not go around loving boys with demons.


End file.
